


Through the Then-Unpaved Stars, the Turnpike Road

by akathecentimetre



Category: Indiana Jones Series, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: "chasing German archaeologists" my foot, 1930s, British Empire, Crossover, Gen, Nepal, Period Typical Attitudes, Tibet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-05 23:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12804969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: "I’m Marion Ravenwood, and you just blew up my goddamn bar,” the woman said, suddenly right in Nightingale’s face, five feet and very little else of bright eyes, boozy breath and not a little amount of menace. “You going to pay me back for that, limey?”“Aw, c’mon, Marion, leave the nice magician alone,” Jones said.





	Through the Then-Unpaved Stars, the Turnpike Road

**Author's Note:**

> "I didn't take their word for it," said Nightingale. "I donned the old balaclava and had a scout 'round their grounds after dark." He hadn't found anything, but sneaking stealthily through the snow reminded him of an operation in Tibet in 1938. "Chasing German archaeologists," he said. "Complete wild-goose chase for them and for us."
> 
> \--- _Whispers Under Ground_ , Ben Aaronovitch

*

Thomas Nightingale, in the 1930s, would never have admitted out loud how dull he found Imperial service.

Oh, the _experience_ of it was unbeatable, that he would more readily admit. He didn’t mind the travel, he knew he was learning of things and people and foods and places that he was privileged to see, he quietly loved the heat of India, he rarely missed home. But the duties of a practitioner in the far-flung corners of the British Empire were ones which were fantastically boring at best – he often found himself longing to be old enough for retirement for the sole purpose of never again having to write another report that would never be read – and oppressive, distasteful, and certainly shameful at worst, as he was expected to stand at the side of the authorities (authorities who never much liked him, and he couldn’t blame them for it) in times of revolt or uprising or famine and threaten to enforce their commands over their native populaces. In the main, he attempted to keep his head down, wrote his letters home, and made sure his magical skills couldn’t deteriorate too much in the face of the temptations of laziness and the charms of the exotic worlds he found himself living in.

He was in Bengal, at last, in 1938, and conducting a long and lonely tour of the hinterlands north of Calcutta in search of what local residents had claimed was the presence of a god called Vritra – a dragon heralding drought and snatching people from their fields seemed unlikely anywhere, but Thomas was more than happy to spend his time chasing it up if it meant he was doing something at all – when an urgent message reached him that he was needed in Tibet, where, it was claimed, Nazi agents would soon be arriving to take possession of an object of scientific and archaeological interest to the Folly.

 _And don’t let the Church get ahold of it first, either_ , the message ended cryptically, which gave Thomas more than a little bit of a headache.

A long and fairly arduous journey followed, during which he managed to snatch a few hours to marvel at Kathmandu and trade for a pair of sturdy boots and the thickest winter coat he had ever owned, before he managed, in the middle of a snowstorm, to reach the tiny, leaning wooden village which was nestled into the Himalayan foothills of the Phurbi Chyachu mountain, where he was met by a man who hadn’t seen the Folly, as he nostagically (and frequently) declared, in over two decades.

“I’m sure I could’ve managed on my own,” William Sawyer said about halfway through their makeshift meal in his own leaning house; he was a grumbling, thickset man who took pride in being both a practitioner and a Captain in the Army, and kept his tattered red uniform coat on underneath his molding furs. He was also quick-witted and far more pleased, Thomas could tell, at having a visitor than he would be willing to say, and was extremely well-informed as to every twitch and whisper of activity in the nearby valleys with their smugglers, migrants and attempts at family life.

“Have you heard any confirmation of these rumors of Nazi agents?”

“Confirmation, hell,” Sawyer scoffed. “They could hardly have kept a secret of it, the way they treat the natives. And you came just in time – they sneaked in just this morning. There’s a new convoy up from Kodari as well which brought a few suspicious coves with it too. One of them seems to think he’s a cowboy, judging by how he dresses himself. Never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life.”

“I look forward to encountering them, then,” Nightingale said, taking refuge from his exhaustion in a sad attempt at humor. “I’ve been told that this particular delegation is after something of true importance – an archaeological artefact of some kind.”

“Aye, so I’ve heard,” Sawyer said; he leaned back slightly in his chair and gestured to the frosted, dark panes of glass of the window at his elbow. “Given what I remember our colleagues doing for the sake of a moldy old book or two, I suspect we’ll have trouble on our hands before this is over. And there _was_ an archaeologist living here, come to think of it, until two years ago. His daughter still runs the tavern across the way. Think there’s a connection, do you?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Well, if we’re going to be keeping watch all night, I’m not sitting here freezing my nethers off without sustenance,” Sawyer groused, turning briefly away from the window to open a cupboard at his side. “Chang or raksi?”

Nightingale indicated his indifference, and was handed a small glass full of a clear liquor so strong that it took him a long moment to stop his eyes from watering.

“Delicious,” he coughed.

“Lethal,” Sawyer grinned, pouring himself another glassful. “They’re having a drinking competition with it over there, I’ll wager, judging by all that cheering. The loser’ll regret it come morning, mark my words.”

Thomas’s head might have started spinning – or the room did – after half an hour, so he put the dregs of his raksi down and concentrated on being cold and miserable for a while to counteract it; outside, it seemed the evening was coming to an end, as the sound of a door opening and slamming grew more frequent and booted feet stomped quickly through the snowdrifts.

“We’ve got men going into the bar,” Sawyer said suddenly, a note of interest in his voice, and Thomas sat forward. “Two fashionably sinister, and a couple of local hoorays.”

A woman – Thomas could only assume it was the bar’s owner – started screaming, and he got up from his chair, nearly knocking it over. “We’re intervening.”

“If you say so,” grunted Sawyer.

Thomas felt his face ache from the blustering snow as he ran across the square; about halfway across it he came to a screeching halt, with Sawyer plowing directly into his back, when the cracking sound of a whip, and then the sharp blasts of gunshots, spilled out into the blizzard.

“Jesus,” Sawyer said, sounding surprised. “That’s changed the odds a bit.”

“Covering fire, if you please, Mr Sawyer,” Thomas said mildly, and ran on, grinning like a madman.

The thudding impact of Sawyer’s fireballs into the frontage of the tavern distracted those inside for just long enough for Thomas to get a decent picture of who was doing what, where, as they looked over at where he stood in the doorway. Four local Nepalese, one enormous and with his hands around the throat of a man who looked straight out of a nickel-and-dime boy’s own novel, while two others were advancing on the owner where she cowered behind the bar. Two Germans, he assumed, all in black – one was heavier-set, toadlike and haughty with it, probably unarmed but clearly in charge; the second was the most immediately worrying to Thomas, because as he turned and saw Nightingale the tall, mustachioed man’s eyes gleamed, and his palm opened, and Thomas knew something was coming.

He threw out an _impello_ and then immediately raised his _aer_ shield, crouching behind one outstretched hand as machine-gun bullets tore into his spell. With his other hand, he flailed towards the large open fireplace; flames spilled out of it and swept instantly across the alcohol-soaked floor, overtaking one of the Nepalese, who screamed and tried to flee from it – only to be shot as he stood from behind his covering table by the cowboy, who had managed to free himself from the clutches of his previous adversary and was suddenly at Nightingale’s side, panting and filthy.

“Thanks,” the man said. “What now?”

Practical, Thomas thought, his mind whirring amongst the chaos – it was obvious the American had sized up the protective influence of Thomas’s magic in a flash, and either understood it or, in the heat of the moment, didn’t particularly care what was happening so long as he stayed alive. Perhaps this was a more serendipitous encounter than it first appeared.

“I’ll take the practitioner. A friend of mine is outside. Can you handle the guns?”

“Can I handle the guns,” the American repeated incredulously, not quite laughing, and with that, he was off again, hurtling towards the cover of the nearest pillar so he could squeeze off more shots from his pistol towards the gunmen. Behind the bar, Thomas caught sight of the still-unnamed woman, petite and dark-haired, smashing another of the Nepalese over the head with a burning torch.

“ _I-did-not-sign-up-for-this-you-bastard_ ,” she was screaming.

Thomas concentrated again on his own foe: the German practitioner was sizing him up from beyond the fireplace, his face twisted into a snarl as he mouthed and gestured a complicated series of forms which Nightingale couldn’t quite recognize. (David would if he had been there, with all his German book learning, but, unfortunately for all concerned, he wasn’t.) His spell, when he cast it, nearly knocked Thomas’s shield sideways, and kept worming tendrils of fire through it even when its first blast was extinguished; Nightingale threw off the shield, stood, and, in the interest of time and efficiency, decided to simply blow up the fireplace entirely.

He hadn’t quite anticipated that part of the roof would fall in when it lost the support of what was apparently its central chimney, but it did end the problem of the German practitioner quite neatly.

“What the hell!” the American yelled, from somewhere in the devastation. Beyond him, an almighty shriek of pain and terror was spiraling through the air; the chief German, suddenly, was running and stumbling out into the snow, clutching his hands close to his chest, his face contorted with agony.

“My medallion,” the woman shouted, and she rushed briefly into the flames until the man pulled her away; Thomas grabbed at both of them in the smoke and shoved them all blindly towards where the door had been before the entire building had started disintegrating from the fire.

Sawyer was still outside when they reached him, glaring off into the driving snow. “Bastard slipped away,” he growled, shaking his head at Thomas; he stuck his hands into his armpits in a futile attempt to keep them warm and looked with interest at their newfound friends. “Who’re these ones, then?”

“Professor Henry Jones,” the man panted, not looking all that pleased to see them, though he stuck out a sooty hand for Nightingale to shake anyway.

“You’re a professor?” Nightingale said, feeling his eyebrows rise.

“Yeah, okay,” Jones said, with a grimace of challenge on his face which somehow managed to be charming. “In this part of the world, I’m just a collector of antiquities.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Sawyer snorted.

“And I’m Marion Ravenwood, and you just blew up my goddamn bar,” the woman said, suddenly right in Thomas’s face, five feet and very little else of bright eyes, boozy breath and not a little amount of menace. “You going to pay me back for that, limey?”

“Aw, c’mon, Marion, leave the nice magician alone,” Jones said, finally with a gleam of interest in his face.

“Don’t _you_ start, Indiana fucking Jones,” she raged. “My three thousand dollars is burned to a crisp in there!”

“What sort of a bloody name is Indiana?” Sawyer said, sounding utterly bewildered.

Thomas, grasping for any chance to regain control of the situation, attempted a smile, and to hold his hands out in as conciliatory a gesture as he could manage. “I’m Thomas Nightingale, of the Folly, in London. This is Captain William Sawyer of His Majesty’s marines and the Tibetan Irregulars. He’s been on assignment to inspect and potentially detain any Nazi agents in this area.”

“I’d say you detained them pretty good,” Jones said wryly, casting an eye back over the gale that was overtaking the shattered beams of the bar. “The Folly, huh. I’ve heard of you every once in a while.”

“Then I hope we understand one another.”

“Sure,” Jones said, and took a still-furious Marion by the elbow. “Well, if you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, we have a plane to catch to Cairo.”

“Mr Jones,” Nightingale said sharply, “is the artefact safe?”

Both of the Americans’ looks changed, to ones of wary, assessing suspicion; Marion slowly put her right hand behind her back. “Yeah, it is,” Jones said eventually.

“And will it remain safe with you?”

Jones’ mouth twisted into a smirk. “You wanna come at me and find out?”

“No,” Thomas said thoughtfully, eyeing the bullwhip that was now neatly-curled again at Jones’s waist. “But I think I might come _with_ you, to be certain.”

Jones let out a snappy burst of laughter, and took his hand off the butt of his holster. “Okay, Tom,” he said, turning away with Marion still looking angrily at Thomas from his side. “Then you’d better keep up.”

Nightingale looked at a spluttering Sawyer, shrugged, and, with excitement pricking at him like it hadn’t in years, plunged off into the snow in Jones’s footsteps, looking longingly forward to desert heat.

*

**Author's Note:**

> So I know the details of time and place are a bit off - _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ takes place in 1936, not 1938, and Nightingale says Tibet rather than Nepal - but it just so happens that I recently attended a talk that was all about how boundary-making in the Himalayas was a hopeless enterprise well into the 20th century, and Aaronovitch just made me so bloody furious with this reference that I had to forge ahead regardless. (Honestly, what else could it ever have meant?!?)
> 
> Title from Lord Byron's _Don Juan_ (1819-24). Thanks for reading!


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